Fallout Equestria: Justice - Volume I. The Mare With No Name

I pursued him across the sky, dodging between the blinding bolts of lightning, the ground nothing but a distant blur far beneath us. I followed him into the clouds and through, already drenched by pouring rain, now turning to rivulets of ice and patterns of burning frost. I hunted him over the boundless heavens above, coursing, hounding. The sun was massive and impossibly bright, the vivid star of high summer. I trailed my quarry, closer, gaining. As we had done so many times before, but this, this was the last time. He couldn’t flee forever. There was no escaping me. His pleading yells were lost, any justifications, reasons, intentions, all counted for nothing after the hell I’d been through. Even had I been able to hear him I wouldn’t have listened. The only sounds carried upon the thinning air were the great roars of thunder below and the howling of the wind. Higher and higher we flew and I was right on his tail. This was it. He was mine. It was over…

Chapter 1. Welcome To The Wastes

“… put a bullet in her head, but her heart just kept on beatin’…”

I was falling from a great height, the twinkling lights of a million distant stars receding, growing dimmer as I plummeted downward through the cold night sky. The ground was rushing up to meet me. The air was whistling around my ears as I fell. It was going to end. What had at first been miles between me and the earth below diminished with such rapidity that any time I might have had left to consider what had gotten me into this mess, the paths I’d taken, choices I’d made, were rendered moot. But, I had done it, accomplished what I had to do, what needed to be done. My fall was almost at an end, the details of the ground coming into sharper focus, the long savannah grasses swaying in the breeze, the shivering leaves on the few scattered trees with their black bark and wicked thorns. I closed my eyes and smiled. This was it. It was over…

*Knock, knock* the sound of a hoof tapping on glass. *Knock, knock*

“Wake up, dummy.” The voice was loud in my ears, reverberating through my head. Pain, sweet solar goddess… the pain in my skull, it was burning through me. I tried to scream but couldn’t. My eyes were shut so tight I didn’t think they’d ever be able to open again. “Wake up you fool.” The voice hissed. “This isn’t the end, this is only the beginning.” I tried to move, tried to make the voice go away but it continued. “WAKE UP! NOW!” The voice screamed, commanding me, then grew softer. “The trail ahead is long... and you have so very much left to do.”

My eyes opened… I tried to open my eyes but only one responded. The other, the stubborn one, my left eye, felt… stuck. My right eye roved about on its own, taking in what little could be seen. I was lying on my back on what felt like every rock and stone for ten miles around. Above, thick banks of night gray clouds filtered the reflected light of a sliver thin moon. It was pretty but why did I feel so strange? There was something on my face, a mixture of some kind of congealing gunk and I couldn’t tell what else, but it was dried and unpleasant, like paint left in the sun... and now it was cracking and peeling.

Lifting a fore hoof to rub at my left eye brought swift and brutally sharp protests from the limb itself, stabbing pain shooting through my withers, down my spine and up my neck as I cried out (pitifully) in response. My hoof flopped back to the ground uselessly. I took a few moments to recollect myself after the sudden pain and tried to stand or at least roll onto my stomach, but none of my muscles seemed to want to work right. Well… this wasn’t good. I lifted my right front leg and when it didn’t instantly fail on me, let out a breath of relief which turned into a horrible shuddering sensation, like being prodded in a nerve ending… with a hot iron. I started breathing more shallowly, hoping to avoid repeating whatever that feeling had been.

My leg moved slowly toward my face, like I was in water. Part of it was from not wanting to put further stress on whatever had happened to me, the rest of it was me feeling sluggish, discon… discus… combine… bob… consulated… what was wrong with me? I knew this word. I had known it. The syllables were on the tip of my tongue but would go no further. I blew a raspberry in frustration and was rewarded with another spasm, worse than the first. When it subsided and I could breathe again I made my hoof continue its agonizingly slow journey to my muzzle. Very carefully I rubbed at my nose and mouth. Little bits of the dried substance were flaking away. Good. I could breathe better through my nose now, though it felt funny, like somepony’d made me shoot milk out of my nostrils… only most of the milk was still in there. I moved on to my left eye and gently circled it with my hoof, rubbing to try and get rid of whatever was keeping it from opening. I could feel dried stuff… pieces of something… in my eye lashes. I hated that sensation and yet I couldn’t remember ever feeling it before. This was… strange, definitely very, very strange… and possibly bad.

I had no idea where I was, not that I could see much of what was around me, it being night time, and cloudy, and me having only one working eye (for the moment, I hoped, oh please let it only be for the moment) and every little movement of my head was an agony I didn’t understand. It didn’t quite feel like pain but it really didn’t feel like anything else either. Whatever the sensation was, I didn’t like it one bit. I tried telling it to stop and, unsurprisingly, got no response. My own body was refusing to listen to me. Fantastic.

Enough of the… whatever the hay it was that had been keeping my eye shut was now gone that I could attempt to open it again. The lids fluttered and there was a twitch in my cheek that almost… pulsed behind the back of my eye. It opened at last and began watering, stinging, forcing me to shut it... damn it. This was going nowhere fast. I brought my hoof away from my misbehaving eye and stopped. My front leg was over my face, my good eye, illuminated by the cloud wreathed moon. And my hoof was covered in blood.

I may have screamed (quite a bit actually, and rather loudly too, not that I would like to admit it), not realizing just how painful it would be to do so. I might have gotten a tiny bit queasy (just a little vomit, honestly, and most of it was bile). Oh… oh no, this is going to get worse isn’t it? I thought to myself. ‘Much, much worse’ a little voice told my aching head. I put my hoof to my face and began lightly prodding, moving it up to my mane (covered in blood and something else, hard little bits of I didn’t know what) and over. I threw up again. Above my left ear, where mane, coat, skin and skull ought to be, there... wasn’t. It felt like I’d lost a good sized chunk off the side of my head. Yup, this was worse, a lot worse. Which probably meant that the little hard things in my mane were… pieces of my own skull. Wonderful. I lost consciousness.

Now I want to be clear, with myself, with anypony… that I did not faint (don’t argue with me on this one, brain, what’s left of brain, which isn’t left because left is gone but right’s still there… what?). I must have passed out from shock or something. When I woke again the darkness was fading, retreating at the horizon’s edge. Oh good, daylight… very cloudy daylight, but still. At least now I could better see where I was and figure out what happened to me. Without further ado... I glanced around. my surroundings consisted of the following: rocks, dirt, gnarled shrubs, rocks and more rocks. Beautiful...

While I was out I dreamed of cities in the clouds, a rather unusual thing to dream about I guess but then who knows with those kinds of things and I did have the excuse that part of my head was missing… if only I could find it and just slap it back on… not that doing that would ever work in real life. Unle-ess... no, no it definitely wouldn’t work.

Further attempts to get up and onto my hooves all ended in failure. Why? After closer inspection it appeared that several of my ribs were broken along with my right rear leg (and my left fore leg as I’d already discovered with painful certainty when I tried to use it however long ago). How was that for inconvenient? I knew that I should be in more pain than I actually was, in fact, I should have been in such a terrifying amount of pain that I wasn’t sure how I was even awake… maybe it had to do with me being short a bit of brain. All I did know was that I was awake, (for now) I couldn’t move, (please don’t be paralyzed) still didn’t know where I was (what little I could see looked depressingly like buckfuck nowhere) and that if I was going to live I would need help. Great, all I had to do was stick out a hoof and wave down the closest pony… except there were no ponies, it was just me… on what I figured to be a rocky (really, seriously, ridiculously rocky) hillside, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Could you even be somewhere if you were nowhere? That thought made my head hurt worse so I stopped considering it.

Alright, time to take stock of my situation. I was alone, badly injured, unable to move and in need of not just medical assistance but a trauma surgeon (a whole trauma ward would probably be necessary for this). And, to make it worse (how was that even possible?), I had no idea of how I got here or why a slice of my skull the size of a tea saucer was conspicuously absent (sans the pieces stuck in my mane) from where it should be. Stupid skull, it should know better than to run off without the rest of me. Apparently I was crazy and talking to myself now too. Okay, if I didn’t do something I was going to die. Well, that was simple. What could I do? I could wish for the world’s biggest bottle of whiskey but that probably wouldn’t help the way I wanted it to. I could… call for help. Yeah, that was a great idea, call for help and wait for some irradiated beast to eat me. Wait… no… ouch, but thinking hurt.

If I called out there were three potential endings. One, nothing happened. There was no one there, no friends or foes to hear me. I called for help, nothing came and I died… which was pretty much where I was already right now. Two, a monster or raider showed up. Some nasty denizen of the wastes heard me and closed in to finish me off. Okay that would certainly end my predator… predicate… peppermint? Predicament! Why were words so hard? If a critter ate me or a bad pony shot me then this would be over, sooner than otherwise, which I weighed as being a better solution if it came down to that. Three, I called for help and some charitable pony showed up and helped me. That was the least likely of the outcomes (I gave it about as much chance as me suddenly realizing I wasn’t a pony at all but some kind of robotic zebra ninja assassin from the future). I laughed at the image that ran through the part of my brain that was still there and regretted it about half a second later. Oh buck me with a thermic lance but that hurt. And I didn’t even know what a thermic lance was. It sounded impressive though. So, back to that third option, somepony is nearby, hears me and gives me aid. It sounded like a plan. Nothing happens and I die a slow painful death, something happens and I die a quick painful death or something happens and I live. Why not? I inhaled long and slow, filling my lungs and ignoring as best I could the horrendous sensation of my broken ribs moving. What would I shout? What should I shout? ‘Help’ seemed an appropriate thing to scream.

“HELP!” I yelled as loudly as I could, which, it turned out, was loud given my condition, only not as loud as I’d hoped. Also, I fainted again.

This time the dreams were of baking hot plains stretching out as far as I could see; sun scorched grasses halfway to my withers. Clouds were roiling above in a building storm, almost ready to release a fearful wrath. And a buck was there, coat the sable color of a lightless midnight, dark as the depths of the sea. He looked at me sadly; his mane the white of freshly fallen snow, there was something about his eyes… something…

The dream ended. I was awake again and I wasn’t alone. I could hear the sounds of something moving around me on the hillside, rooting through the few half dead plants and turning over stones. I couldn’t see it what the creature was but it hadn’t tried to eat me yet (in so far as I knew, I hadn’t even received a cursory nibble). That was always a good sign... right?

“Help.” I called out, but my mouth was dry, caked with more blood and who knew how long it had been since I’d drank anything. “Please, help me.” I begged, my voice nothing more than a whisper. The sound of scrounging and scavenging stopped. I tried to move, to put the newcomer into sight but my body just wouldn’t listen. The sound of hoof-falls reached my ears, coming closer, hesitant. “I… need… help.” I panted and lay there quietly, still as death, waiting. The day must have grown old while I was out the second time, for it seemed to be drawing on evening, though it was hard to tell exactly with all the clouds blocking out the sun.

A shadow fell across my face and I looked up, expecting to see... I don’t know what. I’ll admit this easily enough, I was not expecting a zombie, which is what made me try to scream, fail, then cough blood and dust everywhere. There, standing over me was an earth pony buck that somehow looked even worse than I felt (no mean feat). His skin appeared rotten, eaten away in places, exposing muscle and tissue beneath and in a few places a hint of bone. Hooray, the two of us could start a missing pieces club. We just needed a few more members… few less pieces. Had I been hit by lightning that my thoughts were this weird? Would that explain it?

“Please, take me… to a doc-” I began to say but the creature was having none of it.
“Hush.” It… he… growled at me with a voice that suggested he had gravel in his mouth. “Hush, little mare.” He shushed me, putting a hoof to my mouth.

“You’re not… a… zom… not going to eat me?” I mumbled around his hoof, taking a breath that I wished I hadn’t. He smelled like death, like meat left out in the sun for a month. The buck chuckled and it sounded like paper ripping.
“No, no. Not going to eat you, silly.” He answered, shaking his head, strands of brittle green hair, all that was left of his mane, coming down and getting in his eyes.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you.” I told him, tears in my eyes, maybe from relief, maybe from his stench. It had worked. I was going to be saved… or at least was being given a chance to survive.

“Of course,” he said with a smile that stretched taught the skin on his face and showed chipped, yellowing teeth protruding from receding gray gums, “not going to save you either.” He tilted his head to the side to gauge my reaction.

“Not… going to…” I could barely get any words out. “You son of a bitch!” I screamed, no trouble saying that, and hey, I didn’t faint from the effort (though I came close). Of all the rotten fucking luck, of all the things that could have happened. I struggled to try and hurt the bastard above me but I was too weak, I couldn’t even stomp a radroach larvae if my life depended on it right now. Even though my display of resistance was more than a little on the pathetic side the buck seemed taken aback by it, skittish.

“No, no. No.” He approached me again. “Just going to take… take things. You won’t be needing them much longer.” He put his forehooves against my broken ribs and despite my wordless screams of pain he rolled me onto my side. I was on fire, everything was on fire. Every breath was a gasp, a whimper, it hurt so much. “Ah, yes, yes. Good things here. Trying to hide them, but I see, I know, I look, I find.” He dragged something out from under where I’d lain and let me go. My left side hit the dirt with a staggering amount of force. I thought I’d been in pain before. I was wrong. My eyes were rolling in their sockets (my right eye was rolling; the left one was kind of just… twitching). I was barely holding onto consciousness.

“Please?” I asked him. “Please help.” I was crying now, it wasn’t just from his stink. My plan had failed. I’d called for help and gotten a fourth ending, one I hadn’t planned on; somepony coming, hurting me more and then leaving me to die alone in even greater agony. No swift release, no salvation, not even the calm solitude of the wind alone to carry me to whatever awaited beyond.

“Silly little pony.” He said to me with the barest shade of regret. Little? That was the second time he’d said that about me. I wasn’t little. I was pretty sure I was noticeably larger than the average mare, not monstrous, but good sized. And who was he to talk? I was just as big as he was… and why was I even bothering to think about something like this? That was what I chose to focus on now? Size comparisons and word use? “Can’t help you.” He continued, leaning closer, (good, keep coming, I was getting an idea) the smell wafting from his breath made me want to throw up… again (wouldn’t that be a hoot, throwing up in his ugly face, not a bad idea). “Wouldn’t, probably, even if I could.” The buck shook his head a second time and leaned in just a little bit closer (excellent, I’ll get you now, you bastard) that he could whisper; face inches away from my own. “Why help you? Wasteland gets us all in the end.”

“Well, here goes… nothing.” I said to him and used every remaining ounce of strength I had to head butt the buck right in his (hilariously surprised) dead ugly face. Note to self, for future reference, when suffering from massive head trauma that causes significant pain, do not thereafter use said head as a weapon. Results… unpleasant. My eyes rolled back in their sockets and my whole body convulsed from what I’d just done. When I regained the ability to see about a minute later, I found the zombie… buck… pony… thing… ghoul. Ghoul! That was the word, though I had no idea where I’d heard it before. He was holding a hoof up to his nose, which looked broken. Score one for me, I thought. He looked surprised, (still) and angry… very angry. Good, then not only had I gotten a blow in but…

“Not going to kill you before. Going to kill you now. CUT THROAT, STOMP HEAD!” He screeched at me. Yup, Plan B was working splendidly, dead in a minute instead of another day. The ghoul moved up to me again, somewhat more warily this time, worried that I’d be able to hit him again. It wasn’t going to happen but he didn’t know that. The buck drew a small knife, rusty, blade etched and bent, from a sheath on his right foreleg and held it between his teeth. Now why hadn’t I seen that earlier? Bad positioning I guess. No luck for me. I could have stabbed the prick in the neck with it… maybe if only I’d known the knife was there. “Going to hurt you. GOING TO STAB YOU IN EYE!” The ghoul threatened as he drew near, circling me. Come on you idiot, do it, finish it, end it, just let it be over.

“Do it… coward!” I shouted back at him, not caring about the pain I was causing because, hell, it would be over soon anyways. He got closer and I was able to offer one last gesture of defiance. I spit blood on his face when he drew in to make the first stab. I laughed as he staggered away trying to wipe the blood from his eyes, and as previously, I was forced to regret laughing. Everything hurts again, wonderful horrible hurting everywhere. I really wasn’t learning was I? The pain was shooting through me again, each rib a glorious symphony of utter agony.

The ghoul came back, face speckled with my blood and I didn’t make any effort this time, couldn’t. This was it. I’d survived… come to think of it I had no idea what I’d survived for some zombie bastard to gut me with a little poking knife. I barely heard the sound of pebbles rolling down the hill toward us, but I did hear it. Maybe a boulder had been loosened and was going to tumble down and crush us, or a manticore had been drawn in by our yelling and would eat us both. It was a strangely comforting thought to have right before dying (was it at all unusual that the thought comforted me?). The buck noticed the pebbles too and from what little perfy… perfume… reef… real… ah fuck it, from what little I could see out the side of my bad eye, he stopped and started shaking like a lone goat in minotaur territory. The ghoul dropped the knife, looking from side to side as if he’d find some way out of whatever situation we were now in. Heck, as the pebbles continued to come down the hill the poor bastard pissed himself, dropped whatever goods he’d found around my soon to be corpse, turned tail and ran away faster than any earth pony had a right too.

I watched and waited, eager almost… ready for some terribly tainted beast to come roaring over my crippled form, to pounce on the ghoul, tear it apart, eat what few juicy bits the zombie had left and then come back to finish me off. Only it didn’t happen. I heard a few familiar sounding clicks, slow steady breathing and a couple seconds later a teeth rattling, head shaking, skull splitting, pain inducing boom from way too close. There was a bright flash from somewhere close behind me and in the distance, at the bottom of the hill, a squeal of pain that made me quite happy... serves you right, I thought. Well, this was certainly an interesting development I remarked to myself as I began to lose consciousness (I wasn’t… not fainting… not fainting).

“You’re not… going to… eat me… are you?” I asked pleasantly of the blurry form above me before letting go of my tenuous grasp on the waking world.

Dreams again, lectures this time, boring, so why was I listening so intently and taking notes. That seemed pointless. Who cared about lectures? I was about to get eaten here, or goddesses knew what. I looked around but there weren’t any details to the room, it was shifting shapes and shadows, colors running along the walls, the other ponies around me were ghosts. A book slammed closed on my desk and the lecturer, a small hunched over shadow put an unusually solid hoof to my forehead, drew it back and sent it forward into my face. Ow!

My eyes opened slowly. It was dark out again. The moon was back… still disappointingly shrouded by the veil of clouds. It looked like I hadn’t gone anywhere. How long had I been on this stupid uncomfortable hill? My whole body was still stuck somewhere between numbness and mind shattering pain while my head felt heavy, uncomfortable and tight… compressed sort of, but it was better than the previous sensation where I was worried that if I turned wrong my brain would spill out onto the rocks.

I’d fain- passed out again, reawakened and now it was time to play the really boring but important game of ‘what do I do next?’ Something was different this time, I noticed, while offering a brief prayer to Luna, whose realm was night; that I stop fainting. It was getting plain old ridiculous. Luna… Luna… something about the goddess, praying to her, not praying to her. We knew that she was… hurts to think, got it, not pressing the issue for an answer. Something was different? What was different? Could it perhaps be the flickering glow of the little campfire near me? I was going with answer A on this question. A for answer, the obvious answer anyways.

“Hello?” I spoke, surprised that my throat no longer felt like someone had poured hot dirt and shattered glass down it. I licked my lips. “Hello?” I heard movement, and something blocked the light of the fire. My guess was that this was the blurry shape from before, only now it wasn’t so blurry. It was… an earth pony stallion… yippee, not another one. My first visitor of the day hadn’t been a favorable one. Except, this pony wasn’t a ghoul as far as I could tell. He was just, a buck, below average size, beige coat, from what little I could see of it, dark brown mane, a weathered duster and… sunglasses? Really? Sunglasses at night? What was he trying to prove? Clutch… click… che… goddesses damn it… cliché! Cliché alert. There. I figured it out. I’m a smart pony.

The buck stood over me with an odd expression on his face, one eyebrow rising above the top rim of his sunglasses. It was only now that I realized what I thought was inner monologue hadn’t been. I’d said all the stuff about sunglasses and clichés out loud and there was a blanket on me and saddlebags for a pillow beneath my swollen head. ‘Don’t buck the hoof that feeds you.’ The little voice said.

“No.” The buck said disinterestedly in a deeper voice than I expected. It was the voice of a three pack a day habit pony that spent his nights inhaling smoke from campfires.

“No… What?” I asked, confused.

“I’m not going to eat you.” The buck clarified with a frown. Why were his words so clear and precise?

“That’s what the last guy said.” I shot back at him, sounding a lot more impressive than I actually felt at the moment.

“Yes, well, I’m not hungry at the moment, having eaten earlier.” He said dryly and cleared his throat. “And your previous… company is now crawling on his remaining rotting limbs toward an abandoned homestead a few miles yonder, expecting safe haven.” He lifted a hoof and pointed down the hill.

“You… shot him?” I asked the mysterious stallion.

“I did, enjoyed it too.” He answered jovially. “Been waiting a long time for this one and I only need his head for the caps on his bounty. Besides, the thought of him suffering toward supposed safety brings some small joy to my evening.” The buck gave a horrible smile. Oh… kay… I’d been rescued by a crazy pony, but wasn’t I also crazy? Time to form another club? Pegasi of a feather and all that nonsense.

“You’re going to help me?” I asked, hopeful.

“Already have.” He answered, pulling a cigarette from out of his duster with his teeth and disappearing for a few moments, probably to light it off of the fire. His head appeared again. “I figure, unintentional as it may have been, you held him here long enough for me to catch up.” He blew smoke from his nostrils. “Might have taken me another two or three days to get him otherwise. Now, I’ll have his decrepit hide by morning… tired, weak and wounded, easy prey. And, time is money after all.” He tilted his head to me in appreciation.

He said he’d helped me but other than my throat feeling less like I’d gargled with sand paper after breakfast I really didn’t feel any better. I mean there was the blanket and the saddlebag pillow but I’m not sure if that really counted as help. This was a strange buck indeed but on the bright side he hadn’t killed me, so I guess I was still winning, even if I was dying. Winning because I wasn’t dead yet.

“Not that I’m not thankful, I really am.” I told the buck. “But, I think I really need a doctor.” I was trying to say things as politely as possible, not push him toward anger, don’t be mad at the pretty mare, help her get medical attention.

“You do.” He admitted freely and said nothing else. He just kept looking at me, or somewhere near me, for all I could tell with those damn sunglasses of his. Great, this was just great.

“But, you’re not going to take me to one.” I finished for him, not letting his unspoken words remain unspoken. I still couldn’t move but maybe, if I lived long enough, I could convince him to help me further, or talk him to death, take him with me.

“Welcome to the wastes!” The mysterious stallion projected in a theatre worthy voice, throwing out his front legs to indicate the shitty environment that, in my position, I couldn’t really see. Wastelands… right… check, horrible shit, in the past, balefire, mega spells, war, taxes, distilleries leveled, brothels destroyed, yarn and kittens burning indiscriminately. Not sure where all this was coming from but it made a jumble of… seemingly correct memories in my head, that then threatened to spill out with my lost brain matter. He sighed as he went back down to all fours, using his tail to pull his cigarette from his mouth and offer it to me. After a moment of hesitation I accepted, lifting my head the tiniest bit necessary to clasp his offering between my teeth. That little effort took most of the strength I had left, so I just continued to lay there, staring at the clouds, (was there ever anything but clouds here?) huffing in frustration… until I heard a bottle uncorking. Frustration gone, please let it be whiskey, please let it be whiskey. Come on useless partially missing head, turn, turn damn you! And… yes!

“Whiskey.” I said to the other pony, seeing the cork in his teeth and the bottle of amber liquid resting between his fore hooves. “Whiskey!” He looked at me and laughed, letting go of the cork.

“I’d waste my time taking you to a doctor and delaying my capture of the ghoul before I’d surrender any of this to you.” The buck said mirthfully, grabbing the bottle with his mouth and upending it to take a swig.

“I. Hate. You.” I told him in no uncertain terms, spitting out the cigarette butt in his general direction. Sadly it didn’t reach his selfish ass. He shrugged, took another swig and carefully put the cork back in. The buck seemed to ponder me for a few seconds and despite the pain I tried to think ‘give the whiskey to the nice mare, give the whiskey to the nice mare, then take her to a doctor… and find her more whiskey’ at him for all I was worth.

“Tell you what.” He said, impolitely breathing fumes of the delicious alcohol I could and indeed should be drinking right now into my face. He looked back out over the campfire and the darkness of the cloudy night around us. “I do feel it’s unbefitting for me to leave you here like this so-”

“You will take me to a doctor.” I cried ecstatically, trying to suck whiskey particles out of the air before they could get away.

“Alicorns above, no.” He replied with a dismissive snort. “I’ll set aside some few of my things, a little Stampede, a few doses of Med-X, a couple Dash inhalers, a few tablets of Buck, let’s see, some... Mint-als,” he looked sad when he pulled out the tin, as though they brought back bad memories, “...least they’re not Party Time... and one Megaspell Mixer, should j-”

“Is there alcohol in the Megaspell thing?” I asked imploringly. He looked over at me and patted his hoof on the ground three times.

“Amongst other things but I wouldn’t worry about what proof it is if I were you. Now, combined cost… about one third of my bounty on the inarticulate zombie crawling toward a deviously booby trapped old house.” The buck said, giving me another weird look. In arty que late? What the hell did that mean? Why were words so hard today? Multiple choice question, this time the answer was B for brains, not where they should be, decorating outside instead of thinking inside.

“And this stuff will keep me alive?” I asked, desperate. “If I take it all together?”

“Hellhounds below, no!” The mysterious stallion answered with a look of horror on his face. “All this shit together will kill you… eventually.” He rolled something on the ground in front of him with an idle hoof.

“Then what am I supposed to do with it?” I asked him, on the verge of crying again. Fantastic, show some more weakness, just what the infuriatingly absent doctor ordered.

“Take it all… obviously.” He told me as if I was a slow pony. I thought he was joking for a second, but, nope, it didn’t look like it. “You’re one tough mare from what I can tell, and you head butting and spitting blood on that foal fondling shit stain of what used to be a pony tickled me something fierce. Still does point of fact. I also like your style of clothing, can’t go wrong with the classics. I’ve always been a fan of Stable-Tec barding, even if yours is fake.” He looked critically at me then up to the clouds. I was wearing Stable-Tec barding? That was news to me. Also, what in the hay was Stable-Tec? “Now, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes, try and catch him shortly after dawn, sun will be behind me… not that it matters much these days an-”

“You’re going to leave me?” My voice was on the edge of a wail, I wasn’t going to survive on my own.

“Interrupt me again and I may just roll your fine looking almost carcass into the fire there.” The buck threatened darkly. I swallowed back what I had been about to say. Also, I was fine looking? Yes! Ego boost and rising self esteem here I come. “Now, about four miles due south of here, there’s a little town, decent ponies… after their own fashion. The place is called New Appleloosa.” What in Luna’s mooning moon convinced anypony to name a town Appleloosa... twice? I just had to ask myself, though I was wise enough not to interrupt the speaker again. “They have a doctor. He’ll fix you up… if you can make it there, and that, my little pony, is why you get the drugs.” Who was he calling little? He didn’t look like much more than a colt. I was fairly certain I was bigger than he was by a good margin. I held back my anger at him though, barely.

“You may or may not have noticed, you do seem a bit slow on the uptake, might have something to do with that head wound you’re sporting.” Wait, was he calling me stupid? That wasn’t… right. I’m not… not smart. Damn it! “I bandaged you up a little. That and the drugs should, and I say should get you back on your hooves long enough for you to carry yourself into the town.” He took another cigarette from his duster and lit it off the fire. I was kind of hoping he’d singe his mane doing it but alas it was not to be. “And believe me, with all those party favors you probably could literally carry yourself there, or at least be running like a stud who’s caught scent of an in season mare.” Well that was an unusual and very specific analogy. Look at my big words… that nopony heard.

“So, I’m going to leave.” He said through his cigarette, smoke drifting through his teeth. “All you have to do is make it to the other side of the fire on your own to where the drugs are. They’ll take you the rest of the way.” He was going to make me crawl for something he could hoof over to me instead? What… an… asshole. I was starting to really dislike this pony. “If you’ve got the will to make it to the drugs then you’ve got the will to live and get yourself to the doctor. Otherwise I’ll swing back this way later today and very sadly, very apologetically, loot your pretty corpse.” I was pretty? Yay! I was going to be a corpse? My elation deserted me like a deflating balloon. “Almost sunrise, I’d get a move on if I were you, and watch out, caravans have been… disappearing near here of late, could be trouble around.” He said with a smile that made me want to buck him upside the head. With that, the mysterious stallion abandoned me to the failing fire on my little patch of hill. If I met him again I promised, as I very slowly rolled onto my stomach, every part of me protesting to the clouds above, he and I were going to have words, words with not friends, words with hooves and bullets.

Each movement I made was a new sensory experience in pure hell. But now, I could see the gleaming pile of life and death not ten feet from me. Okay, I could do this, one hoof in front of the other. I pulled myself past the fire and it felt like centuries, more time passed between when that smug bastard left and my reaching the drugs a few feet away than had passed since the bombs went off and this past year. It took every fiber of my being not to just give up and go to sleep once I’d reached the stash. Of course, after the first hit of Dash… I tore through the rest of the supplies like a dragon in a gem mine. Another note to self, figure out where these strange sayings come from, then fire a BEL at it. What was a BEL? Hell if I know but I associated it with destruction so…

The sun peeked its way above the earth as I finished off the stash by chugging the bottle of Megaspell whatever. It wasn’t half bad, some decent quality Stalliongrad vodka in it... not as strong as I’d like but not bad. I was feeling… good, strange but good. It was like I could gallop fifty miles, fight off a griffin invasion single handedly, solve old Equestria’s energy crisis and buck a fine stallion all night long. At the same time all the colors had gone funky and I was pretty intrigued by the fact that I’d somehow gained the ability to see sounds and hear smells. I don’t think licensed physicians would recommend taking all the crap I’d just put into my body but I felt so good that I just didn’t care. Putting the sun to my left I decided to race my own ghost to the town of New Appleloosa (still a stupid name). I’m not sure if my hooves ever touched ground.

I could say that I made half a dozen genius breakthroughs while I ran; that I fought off prowling radscorpions, tangled with a mess of raiders and mapped out several notable places to investigate, now, when the clock isn’t ticking on my life and I wasn’t running like a demon of speed. The truth is I remember very little of what happened between leaving the fire and arriving outside the railroad gates of New Appleloosa. I could have done any of those things (or all of them, I was now some kind of steam powered super badass pony), but judging by the fact that I made it to the town… intact, I’d have to guess my flight was fairly boring and uneventful, which only bothered me slightly, the mood I was in. Oh, and it turned out that the mysterious stallion was right, (smug bastard was probably smiling as he chased down the ghoul) I was wearing some kind of blue barding with yellow edging and piping on it and the numbers 0349 in various locations. For whatever reason, the ensemble screamed ‘Stable-Tec’ to me, and I couldn’t figure out why.

It also turned out the stupid buck was wrong (that’ll show him). I made it to just before the gates, in a lather, foaming at the mouth, tweaking and twitching, feeling something I was dreadfully certain could only be described as heart palpitations. I was walking sideways, stumbling drunkenly, sweating profusely and shivering while talking to myself when they raised the gate and came out to see what was wrong with me (not one of my proudest moments, though far from my worst it would turn out, sadly). It seemed to take them forever to make their way over to me. I jumped up and down a few times and was disappointed each time I returned to the ground. Why? Oh yeah, that’s right, I’d totally forgotten, or didn’t fully realize it until now, there were wings under my barding, my wings. Happy, happy fun wings! Apparently I was a Pegasus and really, really high even if I was still on the ground. That didn’t make any sense. I giggled and collapsed, going muzzle first into the dirt.

“What’s goin’ on here stranger?” A young buck with a gray coat, a big hat and a shiny star on his brand spanking new duster asked. Who was he talking to? Pretty star was shiny. Why was everyone wearing long coats? I had to wonder. I stood back up and hiccupped, tottering toward him. “What the…” The shiny buck… buck, buck, buck… sort of stopped talking.

“Whiskey.” I said cheerfully, boy was I parched. I could sure go for a drink, I could go for just about… I collapsed again and my face hurt, not sure if I said the last few words out loud or not. Okay, sleepy, nap time now. I fainted again.

*Experience gained: 10% to level 2*

The Mare With No Name
Strength: 6
Perception: 3
Endurance: 6
Charisma: 5
Intelligence: 3
Agility: 5
Luck: 7

Traits:
Wild Wasteland - get ready for some weirdness everypony, this journey through the Equestrian Wastes doesn’t know the meaning of the word normal
Large Frame - you were born (your poor mother) or grew into a big, strapping, five meal a day, healthy pony. You may carry 25 additional weight, attempts to intimidate others using the strength stat have a greater chance of succeeding and you do an additional 10% damage with melee weapons and unarmed attacks. However, you lose an additional 1 agility when crippled, because it’s hard to move that bulk around, you must eat more often than a normal pony to stave off starvation and you lose 5 points from your stealth score.

Chapter 2. A Cure For Some Of What Ails You... coming soon...